The fee is per transaction, not per recipient. Assuming he's paying 10 people at a time out of a block he mined a few hours ago, he never would have to pay anywhere near .01 per recipient. Maybe it's a scam, but maybe he's just too lazy to group his transactions. If he keeps doing very small payouts from the same block, he's doing one transaction per payout and they're all going to be with newish coins.